Incoming asteroid to buzz Earth, closest known flyby for something so big; ‘such a close call’

This image provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech shows a simulation of asteroid 2012 DA14 approaching from the south as it passes through the Earth-moon system on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. The 150-foot object will pass within 17,000 miles of the Earth. NASA scientists insist there is absolutely no chance of a collision as it passes. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A 45-meter (150-foot) asteroid hurtled toward Earth’s backyard, destined Friday to make the closest known flyby for a rock of its size.

The U.S. space agency NASA promised the asteroid would miss Earth by 17,150 miles (27,600 kms), avoiding catastrophe. But that’s still closer than many communication and weather satellites. Scientists insisted those, too, would be spared.

Scientists at NASA’s Near-Earth Object program at California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory estimate that an object of this size makes a close approach like this every 40 years. The likelihood of a strike is every 1,200 years.

BELOW: WATCH THE ASTEROID LIVE!

The flyby provides a rare learning opportunity for scientists eager to keep future asteroids at bay.

“We are in a shooting gallery, and this is graphic evidence of it,” said former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman emeritus of the B612 Foundation, committed to protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids.

Asteroid 2012 DA14, as it’s called, is too small to see with the naked eye even at its closest approach around 1925 GMT, over the Indian Ocean near Sumatra.

This image courtesy of NASA obtained February 15, 2013 shows an image depicting asteroid 2012 DA14 as it was seen on February 14, 2013, at a distance of 465,000 miles (748,000 kilometers). The other dots are stars in the background. AFP PHOTO / NASA/LCOGT/

The best viewing locations, with binoculars and telescopes, are in Asia, Australia and eastern Europe. Even there, all anyone can see is a pinpoint of light as the asteroid zooms by at 17,400 mph (28,000 kph).

As asteroids go, DA14 is a shrimp. The one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was 6 miles (9.6 kilometres) across. But this rock could still do immense damage if it struck, releasing the energy equivalent of 2.4 million tons of TNT and wiping out 750 square miles (1,950 square kms).

Most of the solar system’s asteroids are situated in a belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and remain stable there for billions of years. Some occasionally pop out, though, into Earth’s neighbourhood.

Schweickart noted that 500,000 to 1 million sizable near-Earth objects — asteroids or comets — are out there. Yet less than 1 per cent — fewer than 10,000 — have been inventoried.

Humanity has to do better, he said. The foundation is working to build and launch an infrared space telescope to find and track threatening asteroids.

DA14 — discovered by Spanish astronomers last February — is “such a close call” that it is a “celestial torpedo across the bow of spaceship Earth,” Schweickart said in a phone interview Thursday.

Astronomers organized asteroid-encounter parties for Friday and experts just about everywhere were giving flyby rundowns.

NASA’s deep-space antenna in California’s Mojave Desert was ready to collect radar images, but not until eight hours after the closest approach given the United States’ poor positioning for the big event.

If a killer asteroid was, indeed, incoming, a spacecraft could be launched to nudge the asteroid out of Earth’s way, changing its speed and the point of intersection. A second spacecraft would make a slight alteration in the path of the asteroid and ensure it never intersects with the planet again, Schweickart said.

Of course, this is all in theory.

Forget an asteroid blowup like the one depicted in the 1998 film “Armageddon.” The last thing Earth needs is asteroid fragments raining down.

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